Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

them. Certain it is, that the term, in this sense and application of it, was very early, and at length very generally made use of in the christian church. It appears in phrases of constant recurrence throughout the works of Irenæus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Athanasius, Epiphanius, Jerome, Augustine, Eusebius and others.

2. We may be well assured that all those books which were admitted into the canon, obtained this high distinction, because of the peculiar respect and confidence in which they were held at the time, and which signalized them over all other books. But the testimony of these other and inferior books is regarded by many as the main, the fundamental evidence, for the canonical rank of our present scriptures. In the treatment of this question, we are liable to the same delusion as that which we have already attempted to expose. We are apt to look on the Bible, the whole Bible, as one book; and, instead of admitting its evidence in favour of itself, to search for the testimonies of writers external to the Bible as if these constituted the only external evidence for the canon which can anywhere be found. It is forgotten that the Bible consists of no less than sixty-six separate compositions, all of them possessing the highest authority in ancient esteem else they would never have been preferred to the place which they now occupy. The very circumstance which has caused their testimony to be overlooked, is that which gives the greatest possible weight and value to it. When a scriptural writer is deponed to by an exscriptural—this is a testimony of some account in favour of the former,

But of far higher account surely, as generally the more ancient, and certainly the most trusted at the time by the best and most competent judges, must be the testimonies of the scriptural writers in favour of each other. These last testimonies have certainly been much overlooked, as if hidden from observation by being placed within the four corners of the Bible. If so, they are a hidden treasure -nor have we been made aware of the whole richness and power of the argument in behalf of scripture, till we have collected all the rays of evidence which pass and repass from one independent part of this great collection to another. There is a descending stream of light in the testimonies of subsequent writers; and these have drawn the principal attention of inquirers. But there is, in our estimation, a surpassing radiance of primitive and central light, in the testimonies of the original writers; and so, at least, as to furnish the strongest internal evidence for the canon of the Old Testament. The later scriptures must of course participate less in this advantage-as they depend more on the citations and references of succeeding authors. But it is truly fortunate, that, for the greater distance at which the more ancient record stands from the present age, and so the less satisfactory evidence by which it is either followed or encompassed, we should enjoy so full a compensation in that evidence which it harbours within the receptacle of its own bosom. We propose, therefore, that our chief attention should be given to this peculiar evidence for the canon of the Old Testament-as illustrative of a principle for which we have the

highest value; and which we have stated and enforced in another place. It will afterwards appear, how much the establishment of the canonicity, if it may be so termed, of the Old Testament, prepares the way for the inspiration both of the Old and of the New.

3. We are not to imagine, however, that the exscriptural evidence for the canon of the Old Testament is either weak or scanty. We have much of this evidence in the Apocrypha, from which also we gather, as we do abundantly from other history besides, the zeal and tenacity of the Jewish nation on the subject of their own sacred writings. In the first book of Maccabees, written, it is generally thought about a century before the birth of Christ, and, as the best judges hold, by a more authentic historian than even Josephus, we have a vivid description of the sufferings of the Jews, under the persecution which they sustained from Antiochus Epiphanes. Among other cruelties we are told that "when they (the persecutors) had rent in pieces the books of the law which they found, they burnt them with fire. And wheresoever was found with any the book of the testament, or if any consented to the law, the king's commandment was, that they should put him to death."t This is confirmed by Josephus, whose history indeed of this period is very much taken from the book that we are now quoting. "If there were any sacred book, or the law found, it was destroyed, and those with whom they were found miserably perish

See Book II. Chap. iv. § 16, 17. + 1 Mac. c. i. 56, 57.

ed also."* This zeal of the Jews for the books of their religion forms a guarantee for their safe custody, and gives a confidence in their received catalogue of genuine and authentic scriptures which we should not have felt, had the people been indifferent to the possession or the preservation of them. With such a national character as theirs, there lies immense evidence for the canonicity of the Old Testament, in the one circumstance alone, that its books were generally received and acknowledged by the Jews as their scriptures, or the books of their religion, to the exclusion of all others. The state of their Bible in the days of our Saviour carries an evidence in itself, for its being indeed the true and the right state of it; nor can we imagine how that evidence could be made stronger, than by the disruption which took place between the Jews and the Christians and yet the common recognition which both continued to make of the same Old Testament. Even could no express written testimonies have been adduced, in favour of the books which compose the Hebrew scriptures, there is a firm monumental evidence for them, in the general use and esteem of their own people-and more especially as authenticated by the actual agreement between these two hostile bodies of witnesses, the Christians and Jews, who, though in the fiercest controversy against each other on the most vital questions, nevertheless unite in the homage which they render to our present Old Testament. This is an evidence patent to all eyes, and perhaps

VOL. IV.

Joseph. Antiq. Book XII. c. v. § 4.

K

undervalued on that account-though, in our estimation, of ten-fold greater weight than all the array of those testimonies which can be produced by the learned from Jewish authors, and also from the earlier of the Christian fathers. It is well, however, that such an array can be exhibited. It is well that we are told by Josephus-" We have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from, and contradicting one another [as the Greeks have], but only twenty-two books

*

* We now number thirty-nine books in the Old Testament; but these are all comprised in the twenty-four or twenty-two books, their estimated number in earlier times. Ezra and his Jewish colleagues are understood to have made out an enumeration of twenty-four books, comprehending however, all the present books of our received Old Testament, and inclading none other. Their enumeration stood thus. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel (our two present books in one), Kings (a similar reduction), Chronicles (again two in one), Ezra (which included Nehemiah), Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, and lastly the twelve prophets (being the minor prophets, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi) in one book-making in all twenty-four books of our present thirty-nine. The later Jews reduced this number to twenty-two, so as to correspond with the Hebrew alphabet-not, however by abstracting from the canon any of its parts, but by combining in two instances, two books into one, appending Ruth to the book of Judges, and the Lamentations to Jeremiah. This method of classifying the books of the Old Testament variously, has somewhat obscured the distinctness of the testimonies in their favour. In the general divisions too there was a want of uniformity. Josephus, it will be seen, enumerates five Mosaical or Legal books, thirteen Prophetical, and four Poetical or Preceptive. Whereas with many of the Hebrew doctors, perhaps the most general reckoning amongst them was that of five legal, eight prophetical books, and eleven books termed by them holy writings, or Hagiographa. Still later the whole number of books was estimated at twenty-seven -not by the addition or abstraction of any of the parts from the whole, but by a variation in the reckoning of the parts. Buxatorf's Tiberias for further information on this subject.

See

« ZurückWeiter »